WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden cited a variety of positive economic statistics last week when he again tried to convince the public that the economy was stronger than widely believed.
As usual, he left out any mention of the booming stock market.
Even as the president and administration officials have stepped up efforts in recent weeks to promote the ongoing economic recovery, they have conspicuously avoided highlighting Wall Street — choosing instead to focus nearly exclusively on metrics like job growth and the unemployment rate.
That decision, even as the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average reached all-time highs since Biden took office, marks a sharp departure from the previous administration, when former President Donald Trump regularly touted Wall Street gains as proof the economy was flourishing under his watch.
And it is emblematic of a White House that is dedicated, allies say, to keeping Wall Street at arm’s length as it tries to show the public that it is allied with middle-class Americans whose daily lives are not focused on the fluctuations of the market.
“I don’t think I have a problem with him mentioning it, but Wall Street is not Main Street,” said Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois. “And what we as Democrats need to focus on is Main Street, kitchen-table issues.”
Biden has faced mounting concerns about his ability to manage the economy amid a late summer resurgence of the coronavirus and worries about inflation. An October poll from Quinnipiac University found that 55% of Americans think the economy is getting worse, while only 15% thought it was improving.
Concerns about the economy grew this week when the Labor Department reported that the consumer price index jumped 6.2% in October from a year earlier, the largest increase in more than 30 years.
The White House has responded to those worries by more aggressively pointing to a growing job market, falling unemployment rate and rising levels of vaccinated adults as proof that the economy is once again improving after the pandemic-induced downturn last year. All were themes of Biden’s speech last week after the release of the October jobs report that showed the country added more than a half-million jobs last month.
When Biden has referenced Wall Street in the past, he’s done so in the context of pointing out how infrequently he mentions it in contrast to Trump.
“You know, there have been so many records the stock market has hit under my presidency,” Biden said in September during a speech highlighting the August jobs report. “Imagine if the other guy was here, ‘We’re doing great. It’s wonderful. The stock market is surging. It’s gone higher under me than anybody.’”
Stock market gains
The Dow has risen more than 17% since the start of the year and hit an all-time high earlier this week. The S&P 500 has risen more than 25% this year and also hit a new all-time high this week — something it has done more than 50 times in 2021.
This year’s gains are at least partly attributable to bouncing back from the pandemic-induced market downturn last year, lessening the incentive to take credit for a recovery that was likely going to happen regardless of who was president, some experts say.
“Their economists, being good economists, may realize that the stock market performance probably is not all that reflective of what the Biden administration has done but a reflection of a recovery of the economy from the pandemic,” said Steve Kamin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that advocates for free-market principles.
Trump regularly touted Wall Street’s growth while in office, pointing to it as evidence that the economy was surging. But his penchant for doing so was a break in custom from previous presidents, many of whom — like Biden now — only infrequently mentioned it as part of their broader economic message.
Biden tried to use Trump’s Wall Street connections against him during last year’s presidential campaign, arguing that he possessed a connection to the middle class that Trump lacked.
It’s a theme Biden reprised last month, visiting his childhood hometown in Pennsylvania, where he said that as president he was “resolved to bring Scranton values to bear, to make a fundamental shift in how our economy works for working people, to build the economy from the ground up and the middle out, and not from the top down.”
“I’ve never known a time when the middle class has done well and the wealthy haven’t done very, very well. I’ve never known such a time,” Biden said.
Wall Street risks
Talking up Wall Street carries risk for any president, strategists say. Embracing Wall Street, for one, risks making the president seem out of touch with everyday Americans, many of whom don’t gauge their own financial security by checking the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
“President Trump’s administration was the anomaly,” said Eric Schultz, a former principal deputy press secretary for President Barack Obama. “Traditionally, administrations don’t point to the stock market as a prevailing economic indicator because it’s a fraught data point.”
Taking credit for a strong stock market also means receiving the blame if stocks tumble. Paul Begala, a former counselor to President Bill Clinton, recounted how then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin refused to let a photo be taken of Clinton at the New York Stock Exchange even as the stock market boomed in the 1990s.
Rubin, former co-chair of Goldman Sachs, thought a close association with the stock market carried too much risk.
“Rubin would never allow it,” Begala said. “And he would say, here’s the one thing you don’t know: Stocks go down. And if you want credit when they go up, then you get the blame when they go down.”
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